Okay, have decided not to cover the meeting story tonight after all, but wait to see if there are more interesting speech/meeting stories to cover in the coming weeks... Stories that are hopefully a lot more class-newsletter friendly =) I cannot imagine another CAC-type AGM like the last two I've gone for, haha... there'll be like zero issues to write about (save for the super nice puffs and cakes provided post-meeting :P)

I cannot explain the sheer RELIEF I felt after calling up to apologise for not being able to attend the meeting tonight... Suddenly the rest of the day seem gloriously free without the projected 3 hours of travel and 3 hours of meeting and 2 hours of preparation-- thinking up stuff to ask people, reading up on the society's background...

Oh, Charm. You're such a horrible girl, lar. How to go into journalism when the idea of mingling with strangers and getting them to talk fills you with dread? Even my mum was quick enough to pick up on my reluctance-- she pointed out, quite astutely, that I wouldn't be whining about going to school if it's only practice.

Sigh.

Okok, rant over (ah, cartharsis), must run... yesterday's migraine had just about killed off all of last night's homework time, but at least all things seem bright and beautiful now after 11 hours of rest :) Till the next entry~

Post new year resolutions

I think perhaps some post-new-year resolutions are in order, because they happened to strike me in the shower =)

I haven't caught up with my SC girls for the longest time, save for dear Maria Eme and Dyn, during those precious short lunch breaks, and I'm thinking I haven't been so good with keeping in touch people who matter, in this super eventful past year (and eventfulness is not an excuse.) There are people I miss a tremendous lot-- I opened a powerpoint presentation a couple of days ago, a little project my friends and I had made for another friend, amid so much craziness and laughter, and oh.

Promises. I ought to have been a better friend than whatever I had been.

So a huger fraction of 2007 must be left for these people. Resolution 1-- more time with people who matter. And that includes the family as well :)


Two. I gotta continue to fine-tune my writing, and be as comfortable as I can get with words. And to write well I gotta read widely. Which brings me to the next resolution--

Three. I must be a lot more hardworking about reading the newspaper. Must. must. must. must. Even if you feel like dying because certain news is boring, Charm, you still must read, hor! Applies to keeping on the ball with all forms of readings, too... from every opening page of a novel till its conclusion, for every lilt and beat of a poem, for the nuances in a play dialogue, and for every issue in a reading.

It matters that I write well enough to convey my ideas, because I am hardly comfortable with speaking with people I am unfamiliar with. Or with speaking in general, anyhow. There are precious few people I can chatter continuously non-stop with, so if you're one of them you better feel honoured =)

There was the question of not saying what is on my mind that came up couple of entries ago, sparked off by a random horoscope entry, and after turning it over in my head a little I am suddenly glad that I do not shoot off my mouth too much, in general. I have no problems with telling the truth and sharing my honest perspective on certain matters, but there are necessary information that can be shared, and then there are unnecessary opinions that are better left unsaid, save for the people I trust to listen and correct me where I'm wrong =) Have issues with reckless expression, with words of any kind, spoken or written, carelessly tossed out without first considering the feelings of other people or the truth of the matter, so *shakes head* I must be careful not to do the same, hence a reminder here now. Resolution four. =)

More next time, when things occur to me as and when~

I just checked my spam mail, and discovered that the application letter and resume that I had merticulously put together did not make it into the Asian Film Archive mailbox, because the mailbox was full.

And the deadline is over, too.

Bye bye possibility-of-interesting-internship-at-the-film-archive.

Technological mishaps, argh.

Sighee.

It's okay, methinks perhaps I'm meant for something else.

Dilemma for my new media class project. Should I be just a staff writer or should I attempt the copy editor position on top of the usual staff writer assignments?

Copy Editor

Responsibilities include:
Collect all articles for the newspaper.
Read and edit stories.
Coordinate corrections with staff writers.
Gather art and write all cutlines, captions and headlines.
Cooperate with other associate editors
Meet all deadlines.

Extra work, certainly. On top of the graded articles we gotta submit and edit and rewrite, I'd need to help edit my lab-mates' articles as well, and be more acutely aware of deadlines than usual.

"Copy editor" and "part of class editorial board" sounds delicious on a resume, but scary in a timetable... When I contemplate the workload and weigh it against the rest of my modules I get kinda intimidated. I do want to write, and editing could be kinda fun, but is journalism really something I would eventually pursue, I wonder, when I have practically nil aggressiveness in tackling stuff, and is quite dismayed at having to be shoved out of my comfort zone (again)?

Anniversary

Okay, I be good, I publicise, as requested.



________________

NYJC 30th Anniversary

Dear NYJCians,

To mark this happy occasion, we will be publishing a souvenir magazine that contains photos, well wishes and achievements of graduated NYJCians, who are now in established careers. We would like to feature you in this magazine and are inviting you to contribute your photographs and details.

Please complete and email the attached template which should include a photograph (high resolution, jpg format/formal or informal shots; group shots are welcome) to nyjcmag@gmail.com by 9 February 2007.

We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you.

____________________



O woe is me!

I is not yet(!) in an established career, and therefore cannot send well-wishes for the anniversary, alas. And then hor, I cannot forward to my peers also cos they also not in established careers yet, so no achievement photos to send, mah. So I put the notice here, just in case some successful old boy/girl google for NY and find this, (EH YOU!) then can make their contributions.

Then for the rest of us who are unmentioned with regards to the important event, please continue to forward it to likelier sources, hor.





PS. It is strangely comforting to find that things have not changed, and that administrative handlings that had Shell and me shrieking in sheer disbelief back then are still the way they are. The buildings have been reconstructed, the students have changed, some dear teachers have left for other places, but the school's language utilisation remain endearingly infruiating =) How annoying, but how very nostalgic. =)

Man. I miss NY.

Libra's Horoscope for Monday on Life!:
"Why would you say what is actually on your mind instead of always taking care of the other person's feelings? Well, one, because it is honest; and two, because you need to take care of your own feelings too."

*blinks*

Uncanny randomness.

On the more trivial side of life...

I am staring at assignment deadlines and the stack of compulsory RBR readings I spent 3 hours zapping with my friends in the library the other day, and the additional set of short stories and poetry printouts that turned a two-digit cash value in the cashcard into one rather small digit.

There you go. Back to school blues now, just slightly later than everyone else.

I'll rather do books than readings lar. *catches a glimpse of the 466-paged small-font The Moonstone and a few similar Oxford Classics books and hesitates* Er.

There're weekly tests on current affairs too, so Straits Times and one-other-prominent-newspaper-outside-Singapore adds on to the reading load.

And Scorpion Orchid might be thin but it's still a depressing read, and it offers no closure after the pain of wading through nightmarish scenes of disturbing historical familiarity.

But who understands himself or his true place in this country, Guan Kheng thought. Did these people, who jostled on all sides, their faces set in lines of vacant hate, understand themselves? The truth is that no one does. We are all strangers to one another.

It's painful to plough through these lar.

And one other small bit that is not entirely relevant, perhaps...

They had all been together in such carefree times. That was the trouble. They could be so carefree only because others had done their thinking for them...

Crap lar, the last sentence so totally sounds like me. Sigh.

I digressed. To continue, I also realised, rather belatedly, that light-hearted comedy emerges from depressing social reality, and hence American comedy is not gonna be so much haha-funny as oh-woe-is-the-miserable-human-condition.

*buries head in hands and groans*

I would trade that deceptive three-day week for a lighter semester.

But well. Things may get better.

Aiya no notes for me, but oh well, I shall write anyhow. I like reading long chatty entries but I kinda realised I haven't been avidly updating long chatty entries. I like writing in long rambly sentences too, though it's quite a bad habit and media writing last sem has done a fair share of stamping that out somewhat for me, but I think I'm allowed to indulge once in a while, because it kickstarts my train of thought and keeps it going for a while, which is good for writing =D

Speaking of media writing, I'm in for the follow-up NM module again, (still under the lovely Dr P.,) after I've told myself no, Charm, please don't try to kill yourself with assignment heavy modules, but since I've hopped into it already let's have faith that it is all for the best, yes? Have begun to think that hard-news writing is really not quite in my character, because I've always been so much a micro- rather than a macro- person, and I'm comfortable in my little social spheres... Needing to go "out there" to collect information, establish contacts, know people, obtain far-ranging information... is... blah--unsettling.

But if I should stay in my pretty little comfort zone for too long I'll begin to seal myself off from the world and become some frog-in-the-well *croaks miserably* And I believe it is apparent in the self-absorbed little ignoramus I am sometimes, sigh. And here I am, seated, typing about myself when there are big! important! things happening in the world that I need to know, about nuclear weapons in US and policies in Singapore and coups and taxes and things like that. The stuff daily news are made of, that teach people to make intelligent decisions about their lives.

And speaking of news... *hesitates* It's... not always easy to confront.

A professor passed away yesterday from a heart attack while in conference with one of his students. "That is breaking news," one would say, an event fulfils 15% grade point for our media writing news assignment should we cover it, but I cannot do it, cannot see it as a newsworthy subject, even if in cold hard reality it is =( I could hardly get round to imagining how heartbreaking it is, to lose a person so suddenly, (halfway through a discussion with his student... how traumatic it would have been for the poor student!) and how sad, how sad, for his family, for his colleagues who knew him, for his students who have had his lessons before, for... for... for that finality, for so nice and so brilliant a person who is just but in his 50s. Would I have felt the loss if I had not once known him briefly, when he'd co-lectured one of my previous modules before? Would I have thought any more if I had no knowledge of how he looks like, but dismiss it as "one of those sad things that happen in life lar, what to do"?

Either ways I don't think I would take it up as... news. Although everyone else found out about it through the newspapers, which is responsible for giving people the necessary information, for letting people know what happened, in all its accuracy and clarity, yet... *hesitates* Aie. I don't think I know what I'm talking about, and perhaps I oughtn't mix two seperate topics like that. It was just a thought that struck me during media lecture today, when it was brought up very briefly as an example of an on-campus breaking news, undoubtedly a tragic one... *shudder* but I know, feelings and news should remain strictly seperate.

Death... has a kind of finality that makes it hard to negotiate in words for the people who are living still. He was a very nice prof, funny, brilliant, likeable, and he teaches well. That is about as far as I know... superficial, but... but for those who knew him well it'll strike so much harder a blow. How cruel, the suddenness.

Yahoo News covered this too.

Sigh. I think I should probably end off here. Bit of an unexpected train of thought that had veered itself towards so sober a subject that I don't quite know how to continue.